OT and PT pretty much the same????

without actual numbers this is an exercise in absurdities. one only has to go look at the reviews for BvS to see how many critics rated it "fresh" and yet eviscerated it in their text.

and bingo about "genre friendly". i don't doubt the reviews "skewed" negative despite the popular acclaim. these kinds of films were considered junk by and large in an era where they were not the norm, nor considered "serious" filmmaking. when ESB came out, Siskel gave it a thumbs down and Ebert gave it a thumbs up. this tells us zero about the actual reception or quality of the film.

in fact, box office was actually a better measure of success in those days because it wasn't like today where people indiscriminately went to see everything (five times) no matter how good bad or indifferent it was, parents actually minded the ratings, and films weren't as broadly released which meant people actually had to make an effort to see something.

you have to define your criteria for judgment and understand cultural trends before you can just willy nilly make claims about stuff like this.

 

there was no advanced sales or block ticket buying off of fandango either. you wanted to see something, you had to show up at the theatre and stand in lines hoping to get a ticket. if a film had negative reviews, they ran in the newspapers and it was pure enthusiastic word-of-mouth (literally one person to another) that sent people in droves to watch.

yes; longevity!

the PT will linger, always--but more likely on the strength of the OT than anything else.
Star Trek: the Motion Picture endures, after all, by very little grace of its own ~ ha.

as an interesting note, to the best of my recollection, Star Trek had pretty great reviews despite the fact that the majority of the fans hated it. and there it sits on RT: a perfect snapshot of the effects of time and shifting trends.



because RT provides critic and fan assessment, i'd say it's a decent indicator of both critical and popular opinion for a demographic that is technologically savvy enough to employ it (and are actually inclined to do so).

 

I have to point something out when it comes to critical reception at the time:
A New Hope was nominated for Best Picture. A sci-fi adventure film was nominated for Best Picture. In 1978.
It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and even netted Alec Guinness a Best Supporting nomination (the only Star Wars related acting nomination as of The Force Awakens). These categories are rare for sci-fi films, especially back then.

 

i wasn't talking to you. i was talking to @Rebo about the general nature of conjecture based on information lacking in concrete data.

and don't kid yourself that you respect anyone.
you've done nothing but litter this thread with mean-spirited and inappropriate ratings just because the conversation isn't going your way.
that's not respectful at all. not to mention a poor way to make friends and get your point across.

 

I still dont get the point of this thread. You started by asking whether the prequels and the OT are the same. I provided an answer for your question. Aside from a couple of similar plotpoints and music (see the ring theory for crap like that), the PT and the OT are entirely different movies in almost every aspect. The editing style is different, the characteristation is different, the pacing, the tone, the visual style, cinematography, the storytelling technique and the way of narrative is different.

And then you posted this ridiculous fake RT picture, which is based on some biased PT fanboy's lies, based on no real data, evidence whatsoever. As it was mentioned above, two guys did the same and got entirely different outcomes. And besides, noone cares how the tomatoemeter would've looked back then. Its useless even to attempt such thing. There was no internet back then. There were no blogs, forums etc. Star Wars was declared movie of the year. It was nominated for mulitple oscars (in an era when the oscars still meant something), it was praised by Ebert and it was the highest grossing movie of Fox.

Star Wars the year's best movie, Time magazine, 1977:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6VcVc686U...AABmE/LVBfCCiKwiA/s1600/swpdftest5_Page_6.jpg

 

The reason why the OT and the PT are so different is mostly the different directors imo (different artists, different vision). Although there are very few similarities between ANH (directed by Lucas) and the prequels aswell.
However, I find some of the dialogues of the deleted scenes of ANH (the political talk with Biggs and Luke's friends) very similar to TPM's dialogues on Coruscant.

Btw you dont have to give everyone a negative rating. If you disagree with someone, please rather use the neutrals.

 

You've really never read the Ring Theory? Even though this is what you are saying.
And we are on topic. Hell, YOU were the one who said this:

And you've just made this post:

Yeah, behind the scenes footage on films can look similar because they all all films. And yeah, there are going to be some (emphasis on some) similarities between films within a series (otherwise it wouldn't really be a series, now would it?). But the OT and PT aren't "pretty much the same". Even if they were good, they wouldn't be. They are different stories and always were going to be (it's kinda hard to be the same when the ending was already written in essence).

 

Yes I know that, and I wasnt talking about the quality of any of the movies here, just the comparsion.
For example: ANH has a pretty unique (back then revolutionary) fast pacing, and editorial style. Despite the fast pacing, Lucas brilliantly slowed down the narrative when it was needed and gave enough time for exposition. The narrative is genious. It opens in medias res, and then with every scene the world widens. First all we see is the Empire vs Rebels. Then Tatooine. Then Obi-wan talks about the clone wars, the jedi, the old Republic. the force etc. Then the Death Star. The lore of the movie grows as the audience gets to know the characters. Its simply perfect.
The prequels usually do the opposite. Almost everything is already told (mostly by dialogues, very rearly by visuals only) by the beginning of the movie. There are way too many expositions, and way too much is told via dialogues only. A visual medium like a movie needs to find other creative way to tell story and exposition (Like the opening battle of ANH. Its brilliant. You know everything you need to know by the visuals only without a single line of dialogue).

The one which I really missed from the prequels were scenes like the binary sun, or when Luke Owen's and Beru's bodies.
Lucas's narrative of having the characters speak absolutely nothing and let the music and the faical expressions tell everything was again, perfect.
In the whole PT there is only one similar scene in ROTS when Anakin stares out the window.

TPM, AOTC, and ROTS have pretty much the same editorial style and pacing. I find the way of editing pretty void and boring in the prequels. Its nothing like the originals. There is usually a ,,helicopter" shot of the scenery and then cut to dialogues. The dialogues themselves are usually shot with two cameras from very basic angles (above shoulder or tilted up).

 

Yes, the ending of ROTS was a homage to that scene. But I was rather talking about similar scenes as a narrative tool, not the same.